I don’t do any of that shopping on Black Friday. I don’t like shopping in the first place and I hate crowds. I am usually dog sitting anyway.

The dogs wanted me to get up and feed them at 2:30 am. That was a little too early for me. I fed them about 5:30ish. Then I drove home to feed my cat for the day, lay down so he could have cuddle time with me. And got a bit more sleep. Then I picked up my nerve pain prescription and popped into one store.

Hobby Lobby is right by the drug store. I needed smaller needles for some sock yarn I have. I ended up talking myself out of them. Then I wanted some yarn and was trying to decide between knitting it or crocheting it. In the end, I talked myself out of that too. I have too many projects going on right now. I need to finish some of them first.

I decided to stop by the Amigos right there and have a crisp burrito. I’ve been wanting that for a few now. The Papillion Amigos there on 72nd street was dead. It was a little early for lunch yet. There was one table of people inside and no one in the drive through. While I was placing my order, one vehicle drove up and started to order. I went to pick a table and all the tables were dirty. The floor looked a bit sad too. It could have used a mopping. When my food came, there was dried on lettuce crusted to the tray. The walls could use a washing and there was an odd blank space and I realized that there was supped to be something hanging there but it had fallen off but the hardware to hold it was still in the wall. The service was good but the place looked worse the longer and closer you looked. I was reading a book as I ate and in the 30 minutes I was there NO ONE bothered to clean any of the dirty tables. I was leaving as people started to come in, clearly the beginning of the midday lunch rush. And they had a dining room full of dirty tables and a floor that needed to be moped up and garbage containers that needed a serious cleaning. I think that the management of that location has really gone downhill and I won’t want to go there ever again.

I’ve just spent the rest of the early afternoon reading and I think I’m going to take a nap. This is probably how I spend most of my Black Friday’s. Although lunch is usually a much fancier take out. Anything but turkey.

I would love to share a photo of delicious prunes but I’m on a borrowed computer and borrowed internet tonight and can’t really download and upload one.

Dried prunes are delicious. They are super sweet. They taste like candy. I don’t buy them to much because I over eat them and they are bad for me. Dried fruit generally is bad for you. It has an entire fruit worth of sugar in a single bite. So this is really bad if you are a diabetic.

I fail to understand why people claim to hate prunes. Why do prunes have such a bad rap? I’m guessing a lot of people assume they are bad because they have been told it. (Like me and Brussels sprouts. I thought they were bad because everyone said so. Turns out I actually like them.)

I know that a long time ago that all food was cooked, including fruit. (We are talking middle ages.) But eating raw fruit and drying fruit has been a thing for as long as the United States has been a country. Not sure when the people decided that maybe fruit didn’t need to be cooked to death. But I do recall references to stewed prunes in novels. Some were old novels, from the 1800’s. Some were more recent, from the 1900’s. I don’t think I’ve read or heard that reference in this century. Maybe the people saying now bad they are only ate stewed prunes. Stewed fruit just doesn’t sound very good to me in general.

Still, dried prunes are delicious. Seriously delicious. I think I will have to go out and buy a small box of them.

One night, as we were closing up shop in the mall, (I worked in a pizza place at the time), a guy came up to ask if there was anything left he could pick up as he had missed dinner. We had the left over pizza slices we packaged up to sell as cheap take and bake pizza’s the next day.

After I got one for him and was ringing him up he started talking about how he normally wouldn’t stop at an Italian place but the only other place that hadn’t turned out their lights yet w…as that Mexican place (Taco Time) and that even though Italians are not really white at least it is part of Europe. Yes, he actually told me that I didn’t realize it but Italians are really colored and not white.

I got rid of him as fast as possible and got security to go to my car with me because this guy totally creeped me out with his comments on me being blonde-haired and blue-eyed.

Just one story about what it was like living in North Idaho back in the 80’s and 90’s. Anyone trying to talk to me about the Alt-right these days is going to get an earfull. Anyone trying to normalize the Alt-right is supporting Nazism, pure and simple. I don’t care what ‘flavor’ of Nazism it is. In the end, it all comes down to basically the same thing. I dealt with it through two decades. I can recognize it when I see it.

Differences between one type of white supremacy are like the differences between Methodists and Lutherans, relatively minor and and do not mean much to the overall message. (I also grew up going to a Methodist church while attending Lutheran summer programs, so I feel I can use that as an example and know what I’m talking about.)

Put 1T butter and a drained can of minced or chopped clams into a small sauce pan, season with salt and cayenne. Chop a cup or large handful of spinach. Add to sauce pan. Add 6 T of spaghetti sauce and 2T of pesto sauce. Let simmer on low while cooking up 1.5 servings of spaghetti noodles. Drain and put into sauce, stir. Cover on lowest heat to keep warm. Sear 3 or 4 sea scallops in butter, drizzled with lemon, seasoned with salt and cayenne. Cut into half, plate pasta with spinach and claim sauce, place scallops on top. Serve.

Chicken and Avocado on Rice. (by far the easiest)

Buy chicken strips cut for stir-fry. Dice up. Season to taste. Fry up. While frying, put 2 packets of Uncle Ben’s Basmati Rice in microwave and cook per instructions. Half and dice up one avocado. Put rice into 2 – 4 bowls. Season rice to taste. I use Cayenne. Divide fried chicken over the rice. Top with diced avocado. Serve. (I tend to make larger portions because avocado needs to be eaten quickly and I cook for myself. If you have a family, making this as four servings with a salad and a second veggie side would make for a more balanced meal.)

Sausage and Cabbage in Ro-Tel. ( someone gave me this one)

Melt a stick of butter in a pan. Saute a shredded small cabbage and diced onion for 5 minutes. Cut up sausage or kielbasa. Add kielbasa and a can of Ro-Tel. Cover and simmer for 20 – 25 minutes.

Beef and Spinach with Ravioli Soup.

1 lb meat, (I’m using beef). Fry up with some onion. Add half pot of water. Bullion or broth. Season to taste. Bring to boil. While this is going on, chop up several cups of spinach. Have a package of whatever flavor of stuffed Ravioli or Tortellini trips your trigger. Add the pasta. Cook until done. Add spinach. Simmer until spinach is wilted and serve. I’ve made this with Kale as well and chicken and ground turkey and ground chicken. The only way I hated was with the ground chicken. I just think I hate ground chicken.

Far too expensive. You would think they were a high-end store. They aren’t. Just over-priced.

Went to Hy-Vee. Never again. The most over priced ‘regular’ grocery store I’ve ever been too. I only went there because road construction was blocking access to my normal store. I normally go to Bakers or Walmart Marketplace or even Family Fair (formerly No Frills).

The generic items and the sale items and the sale on store brands were all at least .25 cents to a dollar more than the regular prices at all the other stores. A generic brand on sale should never be more than a regular item at any other stores.

Maybe the generic wasn’t on sale, but the prices were so high it was confusing me. My brain was in knots by the time I left. I was so pissed off. I spent about 15 dollars more on my groceries that I should have. But every place else was really out of my way at the time.

To top it off, they didn’t have a number of things that I can get at any time at any other store. I had to scrap my entire menu for the week and figure out what I was going to have that week based on what they had in the store. These were items that I consider basic staples and would expect to find in any grocery store I walk into.

Second worst shopping experience. Only one that was worse was a trip to an Aldi’s once

This is an older bottle design. They have a much nicer bottle now. But Kroger’s Chocolate 1% Lowfat Milk is not a chocolate milk I would NOT recommend. I picked it up because I had heart burn and I was on the run. It was the only small bottle of milk I could find. While it helped the heart burn it was not that tasty. I never had chocolate milk that tasted like chocolate flavored chalk before. It is ‘ultra’ pasteurized. I have to wonder what makes it ultra instead of regular. Maybe that is part of what screwed up the taste.

I have this super simple dish I make sometimes. It always tastes great but it takes a long time to make.

I start with a few cups of water and set it to boil with a bullion cube in it. Any type, sometimes chicken, sometimes beef, sometimes veggie.

Once the lentils are nearly done I add rice and whatever seasoning trips my trigger at that moment in time.

You have to watch to check the water, add more as needed. I’ve found it always takes more than the amount of lentils and rice recommend. I’m not sure why.

Now I just as water as needed until both the rice and lentils are soft.

I’ve never had it turn out bad.

That being said, I’ve had trouble using some of the so-called instant rice. Regular instant rice cooks up fine. But there is an ‘instant’ boil in bag Jasmine rice that doesn’t seem to work. I, of course, cut the bag and pour it in. The problem is that the box says this ‘instant’ jasmine rice cooks up in 8 to 10 minutes. This is not true. I’ve never had it cook in under about half an hour. Even when cooking it on its own according to the cooking instructions on the box. If you want to use Jasmine rice, it will turn out better if you just buy a normal bag of the stuff and cook it per those instructions.